


By the Sea

by Dardrea



Series: Fluffy Hiatus Sunday Ficlets [11]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Rumbelle - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluffapalooza 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 20:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Fluffapalooza 2015 on tumblr, aka the anniversary of Skin Deep. Rumpel and Belle celebrate the anniversary of their first deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr on the 12th. (And I didn't finish my Valentine's post but I want to post something so--Happy Valentine's Day!)

She swayed lightly to a song that was playing in her head but nowhere else. The ocean breeze teased her hair, ruffling her curls and unfurling them like a banner behind her. It also made her pull his coat a little more tightly around her shoulders—she’d forgotten hers, as usual; he was starting to think she just preferred stealing his—and he could almost hear her humming. It wasn’t quiet loud enough for him to try to guess the song, but it was loud enough to make him smile.

“Sweetheart?” he said, offering his arm.

She turned away from the railing and ocean beyond it with an answering smile—that beautiful smile he still couldn’t quite believe was all for him—and linked his arm with hers. She briefly rested her head against his shoulder with a happy sigh.

“I’m sorry for the delay—”

“Oh, hush,” she said. “It’s a beautiful night, Rumpel. I don’t mind waiting—and I hope you weren’t too awful to anyone about a tiny, little delay.”

His expression made her mouth twitch and she reached up to stroke his cheek. “Oh dear. Am I going to have to make you apologize to someone? Reinstate their leases? Get them re-hired at their jobs?”

He rolled his eyes. “Everyone still has a home and a job. For now. We’ll see how tonight goes.” He muttered the last under his breath.

She laughed, swinging her hips a little more as they walked back into the restaurant together.

He’d bought it out for the night—at least that had been the plan but there had still been a few couples there when they’d arrived and though she’d said she didn’t mind he’d led her out to enjoy the view on the balcony while he’d gone back in to take care of things.

It was two days before Valentine’s Day, and under normal circumstances he would probably have run the other couples off with threats and dire warnings, but it was too important of a day to them, to _her_ , for him to want to color it with acts that he knew she wouldn’t approve of. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t, of course; he’d just prefer not to, if he could manage it.

Instead he’d offered to pay for the other guests’ meals for the night—provided they all took the rest of their meals to-go and he’d offered them all _two more_ meals-for-two at any time and date of their choosing that _wasn’t_ tonight. He didn’t even threaten to make the restaurant pay for it all, even though it was their fault for continuing to seat other guests so late in the day when he’d paid good money to have the place to himself and Belle for a few hours.

With the restaurant cleared the musicians were able to set up, a simple string quartet who played softly, sweetly, as he and Belle walked to the table that had been set up for them beside the fire. When seated they had the grand fireplace to one side, a lovely crackling fire helping to stave off the ocean chill, and the view of that vast, rolling ocean through the windows that made up the far wall.

She looked around her in apparent delight and a lump of worry that he’d been refusing to acknowledge finally loosened.

Fortunately for him, she’d never been a woman who needed big romantic gestures. He hadn’t often given her flowers and when he did—well, someday he was going to have to confess what had become of her former fiancé but he was in no hurry. For too long she’d been content with his sarcastic quips—she was possibly the only one, other than him, who laughed at them—and with his occasional, love-struck glances. A wondering touch now and then, oh, and a library or two; he wasn’t completely without ideas after all.

But she deserved more. She deserved to have the world laid at her feet. She deserved to have her every wish come true. She certainly deserved to have a better man than him to give it all to her but he’d fight to the death and the end of his considerable magic to keep any other men away. Unless it was her heart that strayed first. For all his greed and selfishness he didn’t think he had it in him to deny her anything she truly wanted and if that was another man he’d let her go.

He’d spend the rest of forever watching for the other man to screw things up so he could crush him under heel without guilt, but he wouldn’t deny his Belle a man who was more deserving than he was, if her heart ever led her away—

“Pssst!”

He blinked.

His wife was grinning at him from across the table. Her hand had covered his and she was rubbing one finger lightly over the back of his wrist.

“You looked like you were a million miles away—and, uhm, possibly doing something I wouldn’t appreciate there.” She arched one brow. “You know how hard it is to get bloodstains out of your clothes? I mean, I could basically just wipe it off your old leathers, but these suits you wear now…”

He smiled, helplessly. “You know me too well,” he said demurely, tilting his head to try to hide how accurate her words were. And because he knew how she liked it when his hair fell forward and he glanced up at her through the strands.

She giggled, knowing when he was trying to be ‘cute’ for her and she waved the menu at him while shaking her head at his little foolishness. “So what are we having tonight?”

He shrugged. “Whatever you like. Order everything on the menu if you wish, the kitchen staff is standing by—you can take a bite of each plate and we can take the rest home as leftovers. Tonight you will have _everything_ you want.”

Her smile trembled a bit and her eyes softened. It almost looked like she might cry and he felt a flash of alarm. She pulled his hand up to her mouth and kissed the back of his fingers. “I already do.”

~~~

She nearly did take him at his word about the food, ordering six entrees, three appetizers, and one of everything on the dessert menu. They shared a bite or two between them of everything though they each had their favorites and they fought playfully over every last bite of the orange-chocolate tart, trying to barter the other desserts in exchange for it.

She was humming again as all the dishes were cleared, smiling at him, watching him with her big, bright eyes shiny with happiness.

He reached across the small table as they’d both been doing all night, nudging her fingertips with his so they could lace their hands together. “Happy anniversary, darling,” he said.

She bit her lip. “I still can’t believe you kept track—that even across realms, you know the day that I made that deal with you.”

“It was the best deal I ever struck. A man remembers that sort of thing.”

She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t seem to think that much of it at the time,” she teased, though they’d been over it all before and he was almost certain she didn’t harbor any actual uncertainty about it anymore.

“I just like to play hard to get,” he said, licking his teeth, remembering the feel of the rotted ones he’d sported as the Dark One, the scales, the eyes that had so unnerved everyone he’d turned them on. Everyone but her. He still didn’t understand how she’d ever fallen in love with that, or how she could sit across from him here and now, knowing what he was and much of what he’d done, and touch him, and kiss him and look at him with such naked love in her expression. He didn’t deserve it, but he’d destroy anyone who tried to take it from him again.

“Shall we dance, Mr. Gold? It seems a waste not to when you arranged for an orchestra to serenade us.”

He waved his empty hand. “It’s merely a string quartet, my love. The full orchestra is on call for your birthday,” he told her with a smirk, as he stood and offered her his hand.

She cocked her head and pursed her lips coquettishly but then burst back into that grin as she let him help her up and lead her to the space that had been cleared in the center of the room.

They fit together perfectly, though that hadn’t always been so. His hand at her hip, hers on his shoulder, hands intertwined, he led her into the dance.

Once she would have had voluminous, swirling skirts, but in this world she was inordinately fond of short, tight ones, that didn’t interfere with her movements—and that showed off her legs. He knew damned well that she enjoyed that part too but he was vain enough with his own clothes he could hardly say anything about her small vanities, even if the impossible heels she paired with her short skirts made her much taller than was necessary.

Anyway, he wasn’t exactly inclined to complain about being able to see—and touch—those lovely legs of hers as often as possible.

Once there would have proprieties to observe, even as man and wife. Respectable distances to keep always between them when they were in public. He wasn’t sorry to have left behind those standards either.

If dancing was an allusion to other things it seemed foolish to keep that forced distance, as though there hadn’t been far too much distance between them for far too long. She was his wife, his love, the woman he’d thought he’d lost forever to his own insecurity and the cruelty of the world and now she was in his life and arms again.

He nuzzled her hair and sighed, feeling a peace that he’d only ever known with her.

She turned her head and kissed him and for a moment they stopped dancing.

~~~

They walked out by the water and as she stared at the sea and stars he regretted the one thing he couldn’t give her yet. Someday he would take her away from Storybrooke and they would discover new shores and new worlds together. Tonight the sea and stars and all their promises would have to be enough.

She wore his coat again and curled under his arm, pressed against him as they walked, and he thought that even for her, for the moment, perhaps it was.

She sighed softly. She hadn’t stopped smiling all evening but now there a distance to it.

He lightly tugged at one of her curls to get her attention but though her lips twitched a little higher she kept her gaze on the horizon.

“Do you miss it, Rumpel? The Enchanted Forest? I don’t…I don’t understand why so many people in Storybrooke do. With the Dark Curse broken and people free to find their families and their happiness, is it really so much worse here?”

He shrugged. “Where I am has never mattered much to me. Whatever world you want to explore, I’ll be glad to go with you. The Enchanted Forest or this world or OZ or somewhere altogether new. Uhm…preferably not Neverland, though.”

She squeezed her arm around his waist and shook her head at his poor attempt at a joke. “As long as we’re together, Rumpel. Any world is perfect as long as we’re together.”


End file.
